enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

2017 IN SECONDS.

CRIPE 2017 1SE from elise blaha cripe on Vimeo.

Another year in seconds using the 1 Second Everyday app (with music I downloaded from pond5 and edited together in iMovie)

I shared my 2016 video here last year and I am happy to have completed another full year using this documentation method. I was even more chill this time around and while I recorded often (out of habit) I usually only updated the app every few weeks. If I didn't have a video for each day I just pulled something from around the same time and called it good enough. It was (much) less thought about this time around but it is equally as special.

As with so much of what we share online, this video is a highlight reel. These are the everyday moments where I was happy enough and engaged enough to press record. I didn't capture any fights or illness or tears or worry or fears or frustration. Not because those moments don't matter (they matter deeply) but because so often when we are sick or sad or hurting our energy goes into that, not into "documenting."

Just like last year, when I watch this I feel overwhelming gratitude. For the girls, for Paul, and for the everyday moments that make up our lives.

Again, here is a post with a few of my tips. If you need technical help with the app, reach out to the ISE team, they are great!

travelogue: Scotlond, London & Paris.

Last summer I read the Harry Potter play (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and loved it. You can't compare it to the series because it's a play, not a novel but it was great. Right after I finished, I googled and found out tickets for the play in London were about to go on sale. Paul and I woke up at 3am, got in a virtual queue and somehow scored tickets for late June 2017.

Last week we finally got to see the play! We booked flights into London, flew to Edinburgh, drove up and through the highlands to the Isle of Skye, spent one night in Glencoe, took a train back to London, stayed in Shoreditch for a few days and then took a train to Paris for the final few days. It was a our first big trip since our honeymoon and our longest time away from the girls.

We had a really great time. I wanted to write up a quick post to share some of the highlights and to share two of the apps I loved most on the trip.

Scotland was so beautiful it didn't seem real. It was a trek to get to...planes, trains, automobiles, ferries and hikes but wow. It was spectacular. I have never seen such lush ground cover. I could go on and on about it but mostly I just was in awe.

My favorite part of our adventure was visiting the Fairy Glen (that's Paul and I on top of that rock formation) but everything was amazing. I would go back in a heartbeat. We were with our friends for the first two legs of the trip and we rented a car while in the highlands. Unless you were on a tour bus, that would be necessary.

We stayed in Portree one night (shown above) and Glencoe the second night.

In London we stayed in Shoreditch and it was a great walk-able location with tons of food options and easy underground access. We used Airbnb to book all our stays and aside from the usual complications getting keys and figuring out the tiny quirks of different spaces, that was great. We tried the Detour app while in London and took three tours (Settlers of Shoreditch, Central London: The Great Fire of 1666 and Craft Beer and Arts in Hackney Wick). I had never heard of this app but it works a lot like a podcast for locations and is a guided walking tour. You start at a certain spot and then follow the (spoken) directions around the area. They tell you about the history, graffiti and encourage you to enter different stores and try new things. They are not in a ton of areas yet but I hope they expand their offerings. The concept of it is so cool.

And mid week we saw the Harry Potter play!! It was so good. Better than I was anticipating and so much of it felt like a (great!) magic show. It was long, two full plays separated by a few hours to grab dinner (we went to Duck and Waffle and enjoyed the view) and basically took up our full day. It's coming to Broadway next spring and I'd see it again.

In Paris we stayed in Le Marais. Again, super walk-able, tons of food options and easy metro access. We walked SO MUCH in Paris and it feels like we saw every "big" sight. We did three walking tours here too (Grenelle: the Bread Wars, Republique: Terror in the City Light, Aligre Market: Gastronomy's Cutting Edge). We mostly ate beef tartare, bread and cheese in Paris but also did the tasting menu at Dersou for dinner and it was amazing. 

Scotland, London and Paris via one second videos from elise blaha on Vimeo.

If you'd like to see, I used the 1 Second Everyday app to record a video of our trip. I took about 200 short videos and updated the app a few times a day with clips. It turned out so fun and it's very special to me. Video captures something photos cannot and at just over two minutes, not long enough to be boring. It's a travel video that took almost no energy to put together and even more importantly, I might actually watch again. You'll notice lot of walking, beer, scenery and selfies. That's a pretty accurate representation of what we did. :)

A couple notes on the clothes... my jacket (which I wore every time I stepped outside except for TWO very great occasions) is j.crew. I bought it used but this looks similar. My boots (which were a last minute packing decision) are super old from madewell but I imagine this fall they will sell something similarish. My flats are hobes boat shoes (obsessed, I can walk miles and miles and miles plus they are tiny and can be packed in my purse.) My scarfs are super old but I think came from Old Navy and H&M. And my dresses in the photos/videos are all Ace&Jig and purchased used on Instagram (I've become a bit of a pre-owned clothing convert). My bag is Lo&Sons and it's my absolute favorite travel item.

our complete 2016 one second a day video.

CRIPE 1SE 2016 from elise blaha on Vimeo.

Late last December I set a goal to document our year though one second a day videos. I planned to use the app 1 Second Everyday. I have shared some of the clips, thoughts and tips about this project (here and here) but since it’s been a FULL YEAR, I wanted to recap.

Above is our year! In 366 seconds. Just over six minutes and it’s everything to me.

I plan to continue in 2017 and beyond and want to share a few thoughts below.

As the project went on, I got way less intense. In the beginning I was like an art director. I thought of video clips I wanted to get and obsessed over exactly the second that went into the film. By the end, I just updated the app with video clips every week or so and called it good.

I cheated. I didn’t have a clip every single day. And so when I didn’t have one, I just stuck in another video from a similar day. (July 31st might actually have been recorded July 29th, for example.) Somedays I would record three things. It was easy to move them around as long as the general time frame worked. I have no regrets about this.

Yes, I know it's a lot of the girls. Right now, it’s often easier to film the girls than it is to film myself or Paul. That’s okay. It’s the season we are in. However, I don’t think you need kids to make this project fun. In fact, I desperately wish I had been documenting this way for the past decade. My 20s, early marriage and pre-kiddo years were wonderful and in some ways, very difficult to remember. I would love to have recorded snippets like this. Just like ten years from now, I will LOVE to have these moments of the girls.

Technical stuff: Yes, it takes up a lot of storage on your phone. But you can delete videos after they have been added. I think I have a 64g iPhone and for me, this app was a priority over everything. I use the google photos app to back up all my photos and don’t store a lot of music so it worked. I bought a new phone around June. Before switching out I saved my video and then combined Jan-June and June-Dec together using iMovie. I added the music in iMovie as well. I tried to export and save the video to my computer every month so if I were to lose my phone I wouldn’t lose the whole thing.

Highly recommend this project. It doesn’t have to be complicated (don’t let it get complicated!) but it WILL be amazing.

Again, here is a post with a few of my tips. If you need technical help with the app, reach out to the ISE team, they are helpful!

six months of one second every day.

cripe family : 1 second everyday JAN-JUN2016 from elise blaha on Vimeo.

I've been using the 1 second everyday app for six months! It's the easiest form of memory keeping I have found yet. If you want to see the past six months (and the girls growing up!!) in just three minutes, here it is.

Happy July!

one month of one second videos.

Happy February!

I wanted to share a bit about the app I am using and loving so far this year: 1 Second Everyday. If you follow me on Instagram you've heard me pledge my love to this about a million times already but I figured a blog post would give me a chance to share the full 31 seconds of January and go into a bit more depth about how I use and why I chose this documentation tool.

In December (or maybe November?) I was driving Ellerie to daycare and I thought recording a second a day would be a perfect idea for 2016. I knew I had seen it somewhere - I realized recently it was in the movie Chef - so I figured there had to be an app. I parked the car and immediately searched and ta-da! An app.

On January 1st, I started recording bits of our days. You can see the video below.

Capturing a second, it turns out is SUPER easy to do and SUPER easy to over-think. As the month progressed, I chilled out a bit about getting the "right" second and just thought about getting A second. I do not have "technical" app tips to share (you can find some here) but I do have some things that have worked for me as I approached this project.

Hold the camera horizontal. This creates a uniform landscape video which is not a requirement by any means, but I think makes the whole thing feel a bit more cohesive (plus it looks more like a real movie and less like a phone video). It took a bit for me to get into the habit (I take 95% of my photos portrait style on my phone) but now it's second nature to turn the camera.

Let the subject move, not the camera. Because a second is such a short amount of time, I have found that by holding the camera still and letting the subject move I get a more interesting but less motion sickness inducing video. I sort of treat it like I'm taking a photo and frame things up first (using these basic rules) and then watch until I've gotten my second.

Think about the Big Picture, not the little one. Yes, a second a day is tiny! But 366 seconds for a year? That's a decent amount of footage that is still COMPLETELY digestible. I think my favorite part of this is that I know at the end of the year I'll have an already edited video that's just over 6 minutes. More importantly, I know it's realistic that at 6 minutes, the video will be watched (probably again and again). Plus, of course, I have tons of extra video footage now. At least 5-15 seconds a day which is WAY more than I would have had if I wasn't working on this. If someday I get a wild itch to make a long movie of our family, I'll be ready.

Save it for a rainy day. As with any new project, there is so much hype and excitement in the beginning. I found myself thinking "oh I should record this! And this! And also this!" But obviously I just want a second each day. So I made a list of all my "ideas" and when I inevitably plateau on this project, I'll have that list to fall back on.

Export often. I am "mashing" the video snippets together weekly and saving them to the google photos app just in case something happens to my phone or the app. I also plan to save month-by-month in high-res. And a quick word on storage - once the second from the video is imported to the app, you can delete the full video off your phone.

So, why did I decide to go this route this year?

I think it's three fold:

1. My girls are growing rapidly and NOTHING captures that growth quite like video.
2. For the current state of mind I'm in, I love not needing any extra space, storage or supplies to work on this project.
3. It's so very quick to capture the video and add it to the app.

Basically: time and space are limited around here, but LOVE is not. This feels like the best way to capture the love.

Of course, there is never going to be the perfect documentation tool for everyone during every season of life. This is working great for me now just as other things have worked well in the past and undoubtedly something else will work great in the future. I keep thinking though, that I would have loved to have used this to document my extremely crafty years before the girls were born. Or how fun it would be to have a video of just your hands (painting, typing, writing, cooking, gardening, driving) over one year. Or even just a video of a child's face everyday (they change so much!).

It makes me giddy to consider the possibilities.

PS. I recorded a podcast episode with Cesar Kuriyama, creator of this app, last week. You can listen to it here.